Morning came colder than Stiles expected.
The sun was up, but the Colorado air didn't care. It pressed against the cabin walls with a sharp chill, the kind that crept through cracks and whispered, "Today matters."Stiles woke before the sun fully cleared the ridgeline. He hadn't slept much — maybe two hours — but adrenaline pushed him upright. His heartbeat felt like a drum just beneath his ribs, steady and charged.
Today was the day.
He swung his legs out of bed and stared at his backpack leaning against the desk. He'd emptied it the night before and reorganized everything twice. Now he would do it again, but this time with hands that weren't shaking from nerves, just focus.
He pulled the bag toward him and began laying out equipment one piece at a time.
Rope — coiled neatly.Two notebooks — one half filled with scribbles, the other blank.A pencil case.His small toolkit with wire, clips, and other materials for traps.Flashlight.First-aid kit.Water.Dried meat and granola.
And then the weapons — which Ronan supervised carefully every time he used, polished, or packed them. No instructions, no tactics, nothing unsafe. Just the basic presence of the tools he was trusted to carry.
A shotgun with its safety locked.A pistol inside its holster.Nothing loaded. Nothing unsafe. Just equipment for a task he had been preparing for for years.
Stiles paused with a hand hovering over them. It felt strange how normal this had become — not the weapons themselves, but the responsibility. The idea that Ronan didn't hand these to him casually. He handed them to him because Stiles had earned it.
He took in a slow breath.
I can do this. I've been training for five years. I've tracked things twice as fast as this, twice as cautious. I've been preparing for this exact day.
But even with all that in mind, his stomach twisted. Nerves, not fear — or so he told himself.
He zipped the bag and stood.
When he opened the cabin door, Ronan was already outside, leaning against the porch railing with a thermos in hand. The man looked like he always did — calm, steady, unreadable — but his eyes sharpened when he saw Stiles.
"You're up early," Ronan said.
Stiles snorted. "Pretty sure sleep filed a restraining order against me."
Ronan cracked a small smile. "Expected that."
He scanned Stiles' backpack with one glance.
"You packed everything?"
"Everything I'll need."
"You sure?"
Stiles squared his shoulders. "Yes."
Ronan nodded once, satisfied. "Good. Then let's go."
ON THE ROAD
Ronan drove in silence, not the uncomfortable kind — more like the silence of someone giving space for the person beside them to gather themselves.
The Mustang rumbled through the early morning mist, tires crunching on gravel and frost. Stiles stared out the window, watching the trees pass in long, dark streaks. His thoughts moved faster than the road.
He was replaying every lesson:
Lesson one:Look first. Move later.Lesson two:Patterns are stories written by the world.Lesson three:Fear pushes you backward. Observation pushes you forward.Lesson four:Trust what you see, not what you assume.Lesson five:And above all, stay alive long enough to learn the rest.
He took a shaky breath.
"Ronan?"
"Hm?"
"What if I don't figure out what it is?"
Ronan didn't take his eyes off the road. "You will."
"But if—"
"No 'but.' You've trained long enough to recognize signs. You're not guessing. You're reading."
Stiles swallowed. "And if I read wrong?"
Ronan's jaw tightened slightly, then softened.
"Then you adapt. Survival isn't about knowing everything beforehand. It's about thinking fast with the information you have. And that… is something you're better at than most grown men."
Stiles looked down at his hands. The words hit deeper than Ronan probably thought.
"Okay," he whispered. "Okay. Right."
THE DROP-OFF POINT
They stopped at a clearing Stiles had never seen before — a small break in the trees where the sunlight filtered through in thin, cold beams. The air smelled older here, like pine resin and untouched earth.
Ronan killed the engine and stepped out. Stiles followed.
"This is where you start," Ronan said, motioning to the treeline. "I won't be with you, but I won't be far either."
Stiles nodded, throat tight.
Ronan put a hand lightly on his shoulder — not heavy, not guiding. Just grounding.
"Today is not about killing anything," he said quietly. "Today is about reading the world. Understanding it. You don't engage unless you have to. Your job is to identify, analyze, map patterns, and survive."
Stiles exhaled slowly. "Got it."
Ronan squeezed his shoulder once, then stepped back.
"I believe in you, kid."
Those words hit harder than anything else today.
Stiles lifted his backpack, adjusted the straps, and walked into the trees.
The forest swallowed him whole.
TRACKING — STILES' MONOLOGUE
The air felt different once he stepped deeper inside the woods — heavier, older, alive with the rustle of branches overhead. Stiles took a breath and forced himself to settle. His heartbeat slowed just enough for him to focus.
Okay, time to start.
He crouched, scanning the ground. The soil was soft with moisture. It held impressions easily.
Tracks.
Barely visible, lightly pressed into the dirt — two parallel grooves, uneven in spacing.
Not a mountain lion. They're cleaner. Not a bear — no heel pad. Not a wolf — spacing is off.
He brushed a hand above them.
Cloven… but too narrow for a deer. And the drag mark behind it is weird. Almost like its back leg isn't working right.
His mind ran quickly.
Ungulate pattern… limping gait… short stride… That narrows it to about five possibilities.
He moved forward, following the faint trails between the underbrush.
Every step felt like opening another page of a story only he could read.
Broken twigs — low to the ground, not high.A snag of fur caught on bark — coarse, darker than a deer's, lighter than an elk's.A slightly unnatural smell — not decay, not wet fur, something else.
Then he found it.
A print clearer than the rest — split hooves, but with elongated back edges. Exactly the type Ronan had mentioned once in passing but never gone into detail about.
Stiles' breath hitched in recognition.
Satyr beast? Maybe. Not the mythological kind — the real version. Smaller. Territorial. Carnivore. Not deadly unless cornered, but definitely not harmless.
He exhaled.
"That's manageable," he murmured. "Not easy, not too hard. Okay. I can work with this."
He wrote it in his notebook:
Possibility: Satyr-type hybrid.Behavior: territorial, hunts small animals, lair-oriented.Danger level: moderate. Avoid close quarters. Use distance. Observe before confrontation.
He kept moving, the tracks getting fresher, the disturbances clearer.
He was close.
THE DISCOVERY
After twenty minutes of tracking through increasingly dense foliage, Stiles froze.
Ahead of him, in a dip between two large boulders, he spotted it — a small cave entrance, partly hidden by dead branches and stone.
The smell hit him next: damp earth mixed with a sharp, musky scent he had learned to associate with carnivores.
This is it. The lair.
He crouched behind a fallen log and studied the entrance.
Scratches around the opening — diagonal, shallow.Scattered bones — small animals, rabbits maybe.Footprints — the same kind he'd been following, leading in and out.
He flipped to a new page in his notebook.
Lair identified. Creature likely asleep or out hunting. Time window: small.Plan: set traps around perimeter. Non-lethal. Designed to slow or warn.Goal: lure creature out safely, observe behavior, avoid direct confrontation.
He set the notebook aside and reached for his materials: wire, clamps, small sound triggers, and other simple mechanisms Ronan had taught him to assemble. Nothing dangerous — just enough to alert him when the creature moved or tried to escape.
As he worked, his mind continued the monologue — the way Ronan trained him to do.
Trap one: perimeter warning. Tripline attached to noise-maker.Trap two: directional funnel — not to trap it, but to guide where it moves.Trap three: fallback line — alerts me if it circles behind.
He worked quietly, methodically, placing each piece exactly where it needed to be. His hands shook a little at first, but the more he focused on the task, the steadier they became.
This… this I know. This I trust. Ronan drilled this into me for years.
When he finished, he stepped back, took in the scene, and nodded.
The area felt secure.
Prepared.
Now came the hardest part.
He approached the cave entrance slowly, stopping at the point Ronan always called "the threshold." Close enough to sense what was inside; far enough not to get himself killed.
"Okay… okay," Stiles whispered. "Time to lure it out."
He pulled a portable noise device from his bag — not a weapon, just a distraction tool Ronan had let him practice with before.
He clicked it on.
The high-pitched oscillating sound echoed into the cave, bouncing off the stone walls and disappearing into the dark.
Stiles stepped back, breath held.
He could feel the air shift.
Something was moving.
Something alive.
The traps stayed silent — for now — but the forest felt different, like the shadows were leaning closer.
The creature was waking.
Stiles swallowed hard, heart pounding like it wanted to break free of his chest.
"Okay," he whispered, voice barely audible.
"Come out."